And Through the Woods
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: Three pounds each.


Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.

**Author's Note: **Another answer to the Holiday Challenge, set very shortly after the second season episode "You and the Horse You Rode in On" in which Mark took a three week hiatus from Gulls Way and had an encounter with independence, and pyramid scam artist David Waverly.

Thanks, Owl, for both challenge and beta.

**And Through the Woods**

By L.M. Lewis

Things had settled down quickly, once McCormick was back on the estate where he belonged.

Hardcastle caught himself for a moment at that stray thought, wondering where the hell it had come from—the "where he belonged" part. He harumphed softly, but not softly enough to escape notice from the guy in question, not in the close confines of the 'Vette, tooling along a back road.

McCormick had noticed, obviously. There'd been a glance over in his direction, but no comment followed it. Instead, the man had gone right back to contemplating the headlight-lit twisting road in front of them—the up-country north of Ranger Peak. They'd gotten a late start heading home from a visit to an old pal of Hardcastle's—a former cop who had a small inholding in the Los Padres—but Mark was also noticeably quiet about that. The judge would have figured him for at least a grumble or two about driving after dark on this kind of terrain, maybe even a request to take over behind the wheel.

All this reform on the younger man's part was a little disconcerting, Hardcastle thought. _Damned unnatural. _This time he made not so much as a grunt, but he finally said "It's not too much further down to 101."

"Maybe ten miles," Mark replied, in a tone that was hardly challenging. As to how far ten miles was, driving under these conditions, that was left unspoken.

00000

Mark had resisted the urge to pull rank in the driving department. That never worked with the vehicle in question, and the judge had made a strong case for taking the convertible out for what was to have been a pleasant drive up into the mountains. Anyway, the whole episode with David Waverly—Mark's mistaken attempt at independence—was still too close to the surface. He had no desire to hear it evoked by Hardcastle in the course of a futile argument. He was only surprised that the topic hadn't come up at all in the past few days.

Hell, the man was being circumspect about everything since Mark had returned from his three-week sojourn in the real world. There'd been a couple of times when he'd wished Hardcastle would just cut loose and let him have it. This was like watching the storm clouds gather on the horizon, ever expected but not yet arrived.

He noticed they'd picked up some speed. He didn't want to point out that Hardcastle was driving a little past the front end of his headlights and there was a haze in the air that made the high beams worse than useless. This wasn't one of the crisp fall nights that Mark associated with higher altitudes. It would be a long, slow descent through one last gap and then out into the valley. He felt Hardcastle ease up on the accelerator as they entered a curve.

The shape was large and moving fast—a shadow in the roadway, suddenly stock-still. Hardcastle's foot was instinctively on the brake, in counterpoint to a shouted warning from McCormick. There was no time to feather it before he had to jerk the wheel sharply to avoid a collision. The skid was inevitable but brief, and ended when they struck something smaller, but nearly as unforgiving as a mule deer. A thud, solid and heavy, with both men yanked hard against their seat belts, was followed by momentary silence.

"What the hell was that?" Mark twisted half around in his seat.

In the near darkness behind them only a movement of brown on black was visible, ascending the rise on the opposite side.

"A deer, I think." Hardcastle fumbled with his belt, unlatching it. "You okay?"

Mark nodded. He rustled around for something and then climbed out on his side and met Hardcastle at the front of the vehicle, which was wedged up against a decent-sized boulder. It had done some grill damage. The younger man popped the hood, which groaned for a moment as some dented part gave way against force. He thumbed the small flashlight he'd retrieved from the glove compartment and played the light over the engine and the front end.

Things looked grim even to Hardcastle's untrained eye. The low whistle followed by a sigh issuing from McCormick only confirmed his suspicions.

"It's only ten miles," the judge said stoutly, as Mark lowered the lid and flicked off the light, allowing them both to adjust to the darkness.

McCormick might have been frowning. His voice was certainly frowning as he said, "Three hours, maybe, in the dark like this, and that's just down to 101."

"Maybe we'll run into somebody coming up."

Mark left the man to his unwarranted optimism. He had bigger worries to contemplate as they started down the road. Claudia had said three or four days, and now it looked unlikely that they'd be back at the estate by morning. This was cutting things very close.

He must've sighed again. The judge pulled up momentarily and said, "Ten miles won't _kill_ ya, y'know."

"It's not the walk," Mark said, not pausing in his steady trudge.

Hardcastle hustled to catch up with him. "What then? The 'Vette? I thought it'd be a little hammering out and a new bumper maybe. There's something you're not telling me, huh?" He shook his head tightly. "Just a rock—"

"A rock?"Mark's laugh was short and pointed. "More like a boulder, but . . . nah, not the 'Vette. We'll put'er back together."

"Then what's with all the sighing? You _like_ messing around with that car."

"It's not the car." Mark tried to put some sincerity into it.

Hardcastle looked over his shoulder, one last glance at the vehicle which was not in question. He turned his gaze back to McCormick and looked doubtful. Mark hesitated a moment more, then gave in to the stare.

"It's the turkey," he said grudgingly. "I left it in the freezer."

"You're worried about the _bird_?" Even by starlight the man's eyebrows were noticeably raised.

"Well . . ." Mark hesitated again, "_yeah_."

"But it's only Sunday night. It's not like we're gonna be stuck up here all week. Thanksgiving isn't till Thursday."

"I dunno," Mark walked, shoulders slumped, his hands in his pockets, "I never made a turkey before, so I asked Claudia—"

Hardcastle nodded at this logic.

"—and she said three days at least, and one that size might take four in the fridge." He looked up and scanned the switchback road ahead of them disappearing around another curve just ahead, the landscape of shadowed trees to either side. "I thought we'd be home tonight."

Hardcastle had fallen back a step. Now he pulled up short again. "Wait a minute—I don't think it used to take Sarah that long. Just how big a bird did you get, anyway?"

More hesitation, and then, in a slightly detached but not quite nonchalant voice, "Twenty-four pounds . . . there was a sale."

A moment of fairly dense silence followed as the judge started walking again. Then he clicked his tongue against his teeth and said, "I hope Claudia gave you some good casserole recipes, too. That's twelve pounds each."

"Well, some of it's bones," Mark pointed out. "And, anyway, we won't have to split it fifty-fifty."

"What, you figure yourself for a sixty-forty split, being the cook?"

Mark grinned, but there was a nervous twitch to the corner of his mouth. He thought maybe he should just get it over with. Still, he was inclined to sidle up on it.

"You know, Frank's working on Thanksgiving—he volunteered to take the shift so some of the younger guys could spend it with their families."

Hardcastle's acknowledgement was a little slow in coming—maybe he hadn't known. Mark had only found out the other day when he'd called up Claudia for some cooking advice—this was going to be his first solo turkey adventure.

There was finally a grunt from the older man, which might have meant "Yeah".

"And, well," Mark frowned, trying to remember just exactly how the idea had come to him, "Claudia was kinda disappointed that they won't make it up to her sister's this year, on account of that, so I said we have that big table in the dining room, and you'd insist on having turkey anyway, and turkey for two people seems a little silly—"

"Especially a twenty-four pounder," the judge observed.

"Yeah," Mark grinned. "So, anyway, I invited them and she said yes. You won't mind having Thanksgiving dinner at suppertime? Frank'll be off by four. I figured we could watch some games and work up an appetite."

"We'll have to—that's still six pounds each."

"Well, okay, then I talked to Mattie—you know she's got that Franklin case." He saw Hardcastle's slightly surprised look, followed by a hasty, if belated nod. "And she wants to get the jury seated, get the thing underway by next week."

This time the judge apparently couldn't help himself. "Yeah, I heard about it, but how come _you _knew about it?"

"Ah, well . . ." Mark frowned, "I guess it was when I called her up to ask her about that pumpkin thing she brought to the Halloween party. It was a soufflé, she said. You liked it, didn'tcha?"

"It was terrific."

"Yeah, so, I thought I'd get the recipe from her."

Now he knew he was getting an odd stare from the older man, but he kept his own face turned resolutely forward, toward the down-sloping road.

"It's Thanksgiving," he finally said, with mild insistence. "Last year Sarah did everything and all we had to do was warm it up. Even that seemed kinda complicated."

"We don't need some fancy eight-course meal," Hardcastle said mildly.

Mark halted suddenly and turned toward him. "But it's _Thanksgiving_. I kinda figured you'd at least expect a turkey and the fixin's . . . anyway," he shrugged and resumed his walk, "I told her about Frank and Claudia and it turned out she's not taking Friday off—she's stuck in town this year—"

"—So you invited her, too," the judge finished, still very mild.

Mark let out a sigh of relief.

"So that's, um, a little under five pounds each," the judge observed.

"Except you know Lieutenant Carlton's folks are all back in Philadelphia."

"Ah, no, I didn't know that."

"Yeah, except his sister, and she's up in Pocatello. You know there's no direct flights from here to Pocatello? You have to go through Seattle."

"You learn something every day . . . so Carlton has a good recipe for Waldorf salad or what?"

"No," Mark smiled, "'course not. I think he lives on TV dinners. But his car was making this pinging sound. He asked me to take a listen to it last week when you were in talking to Frank about the Pasternak files."

"And you heard he couldn't get a direct flight to Idaho so, let's see, four pounds each, right?"

"Don't forget about the bones."

"You sure twenty-four pounds is going to be big enough?"

"Don't worry; I got a ham, too."

"Does _that_ need to thaw?"

"You don't freeze _ham_," Mark said emphatically.

"Of course not . . . silly me." Hardcastle shook his head, then reached up and scratched it. "So, there's six of us for Thanksgiving dinner."

"Eight . . . Carlton's dating Rosalee."

"Rosalee who?"

"Um, Jones, I think—the one down in records."

Hardcastle looked sharply toward him. "The one who snaps her gum all the time?"

"Not _all_ the time. I think it was just that one day."

"I don't think she actually knows the alphabet."

"No, you had the name spelled wrong, I'm pretty sure it was Wyzodniak not Wzyodniak— and it was after five o'clock on a Friday, as I recall. I'da snapped my gum at you, too."

"I don't think she likes me very much."

"Then it's a good thing she's dating Carlton . . . and this'll be a chance to make it up to her. It never hurts to have a friend in the criminal records department, right?"

"I suppose," Hardcastle muttered and then, after a moment, "but that's seven, not eight."

"Uh-huh," Mark said, figuring Rosalee had been at least as hard a sell as the next one and that hadn't gone too badly. He took a deep breath and forged ahead.

"I was talking to Teddy Hollins the other day—"

He heard a slight groan from the man next to him, without much attempt at a polite stifle.

"—and he was talking about how much he missed the mashed potatoes up in Quentin and I thought 'Whoa_, Teddy_ . . ..' The guy's probably living on beans and bologna sandwiches. I don't think he's been out of the joint long enough in the last ten years to learn how to use anything but a can opener."

There was only silence from the judge. Mark chose to interpret this as a sign of encouragement.

"And you don't want Teddy starting to miss prison potatoes, do ya, Judge? Anyway, the rest of them are your friends; I figured it'd be okay to invite one of mine."

He rested his case and then lifted his head slightly and sniffed the air.

00000

It had been one of those McCormick stories—the kind that starts out with a missing screw from the lawnmower and ends up with a trip to the ER—only this one kind of made sense, in a Rube Goldberg sort of way. And it was about time that Mattie met Teddy. She'd heard the whole story at least three times, once each from McCormick and Judge Gault, and one time from Hardcastle himself, just for balance. He stifled a smile and turned his thoughts back to the main issue.

"When were you thinking of getting around to telling me about this little get-together?"

There wasn't much hesitation from McCormick and the judge didn't have to see the grin, he could hear it.

"Oh, probably when it was too late for you to say 'no'."

"Is it too late now?"

"Aw, come on, Judge—" Mark protested, and then, just as suddenly, he seemed to get that there hadn't been much force behind the words and he amended his own to "—only if you make the phone calls."

"Well," Hardcastle said thoughtfully, "I guess we can't have Teddy sitting at home eating beans out of a can."

He was pretty sure Mark was smiling at that last remark. In the silent pause that followed, his mind wandered back to the other thing the kid had said--_the rest of them are your friends_.

"They're yours, too."

"My what?" Mark said absently.

"Friends. Mattie and Claudia and Frank and all."

"Oh . . . _yeah_," Mark said, still sounding a little removed. "I know."

Hardcastle shook his head. He was glad he hadn't gone off on a rant at being left out of the holiday plans until after they'd already been made—and he suspected he would have had some fairly sharp remarks to make if he'd been let in on it beforehand. All in all, Mark had probably been right, presenting it as a _fait accompli_. He sniffed once.

He halted for moment, turning and sniffing again. He frowned. "Hey, you smell that?"

Mark stopped, too, looking back over his shoulder. "Yeah," he said quietly, "a ways back. You don't suppose there's another cabin around here, somebody with a wood fireplace?"

Hardcastle shook his head.

Mark had the flashlight out of his pocket again and thumbed it on, pointing it back up the road. It was nothing so dense as to obscure what was near at hand, but there, further up, hanging low in the trees, was an unmistakable thickening of the haze they'd seen earlier.

"I think it was there all along," Mark said. "We just got used to it slowly."

"Then it must be getting worse," the judge observed. Now that they were no longer moving, the breeze was clearly back from the way they'd been coming. There was no flicker of flame, no color in the sky above the hill. "But it's still a ways off."

"The 'Vette—"

"Might be coming from the south . . . anyway," Hardcastle added, "there's nothing we can do about it now." He turned forward and started moving again, this time with a brisker pace.

Mark matched his stride and asked anxiously, "How far you think we've come?"

"A mile, maybe," Hardcastle estimated generously. "Not far enough. At any rate, not much wind today; it's probably not moving all that fast."

The breeze suddenly increased, with a warmer feel to it and a gust that pushed against their backs.

"Somebody'll notice it, right? There'll be trucks heading up here—"

"Maybe," Hardcastle replied, falling short of sounding confident. "We're a ways out of town. It kinda matters where the towers are." He noticed Mark had picked up the pace a little more. "They're kinda unpredictable. I've seen 'em, up north of Malibu. You think you got it figured out, and suddenly the fire does something different."

"I know," Mark said quietly. There was something more than casual agreement in his tone. Hardcastle looked at him sharply.

"Clarkeville—they used us short timers when the fires started north of San Bernardino. We were supposed to clear chaparral, just in case it turned toward the city. It sounded kind of interesting and, anyway, a chance to get out, walk around, do something _useful_."

Hardcastle nodded.

"And then the wind shifted." McCormick glanced over his shoulder again. There might have been a shudder to go along with that motion. "Eighty miles an hour—that's what they said later. I dunno. Coming down through the canyon. It almost knocked me flat. You can't run that fast; hell, we were lucky it was still a ways off and the bus was right there. By the time we were all on board we could see flames coming over the hill north of where we were." He was facing Hardcastle briefly, a grim smile visible. "The guards didn't bother with a head count that time before we took off."

"Nobody got hurt?"

"Nah," the smile was more genuine this time, "but we got chewed out for leaving the shovels and stuff behind. They sent one of the guards for 'em later on. He brought back a couple of pieces of melted slag. The handles were gone. I think that got the warden off our backs."

Hardcastle grunted. "Well, the fire doesn't move as fast as the wind is blowing, it just seems that way sometimes"

They both picked up the pace again. The next turn brought them to a slightly clearer spot—the trees were getting shorter and more spaced. A sudden motion to their left and another deer came out, moving fast across the road ahead of them and into the scrub on the right-hand side.

"I think they've got the right idea," the judge said dryly. "When it comes, it comes; there's not much you can do about it. Took me a while to figure that out."

"You've had a couple down in Malibu."

"A couple, yeah . . . Christmas morning, '56—been awake all night on account of the wind. Tommy was worrying about Santa. I had to shag him back in his room a couple of times. At first light I went out on the front steps—I could see it to the west, up over the crest of the hills. Just smoke, but it was coming down by Zuma, just a mile or so from our place, and the winds were hot . . ."

"You pulled out the garden hose, right?"

"Well," Hardcastle scratched his nose and glanced back quickly, "first I rousted Nancy out, told her to pack up the car and get her and Tommy down to her sister's in Santa Monica."

"Makes sense."

"Hah, you'd think so, wouldn't ya? That was one of the biggest fights we ever had. She tried to pull rank on me—my first big fire and she'd grown up in Malibu and all. I probably woulda lost on points except I convinced her Didi would skin me alive if I let her and Tommy stay up there."

He was smiling at the recollection of the two of them, in robes and pajamas, arguing out on the front steps, trying not to wake the finally sleeping kid. His expression suddenly sobered.

"But we couldn't let her folks' house go without a fight. I watered down the shingles and hedges while she threw the important papers and photo albums in a box. Some of Tommy's presents, too—she didn't think she could get him past the tree and out the door with the stash sitting there all wrapped and waiting."

"Not hardly," Mark nodded.

"And then she sat there, in the car, for the longest time."

"She couldn't bring herself to go, huh?"

"Well . . . nah, mostly giving me advice."

This time Mark laughed out loud and finally sputtered, "Which I'm sure you took with your usual style and good grace."

"I finally told her to move it or lose it." He was smiling again. "And then she was gone, her and the kid. And I tried to remember what she told me, all of it, cause I'd never in my life seen anything like it—the wind and the heat and the _noise_ of it. I was running around trying to stay on top of it—embers kept flying by, high up, some of them the size of your hand, chunks of wood, really."

"But you fought it off—the house didn't burn."

"No, it didn't, but it wasn't 'cause of me. The wind shifted. It does that—like at San Bernardino—only this time it pushed the fire down into the ocean, still west of us. Took four days, though, before everything was out. I didn't sleep much, and the phone wasn't working after that first morning. Nancy told me later she left Tommy with Didi and tried to get back up there the next morning—they wouldn't let her through and she almost got herself arrested for cussing out a cop.

"In the end, though, the place hadn't burned, and I went down to Santa Monica and had leftover ham and turkey and was a hell of a lot more thankful than I'd been on Thanksgiving."

He looked back over his shoulder. "You don't fight it; you live with it."

"You mean ever since then you've just packed up and run?"

Hardcastle frowned. "Okay, well, fighting's a hard habit to break. I like to water things down real good before I take off, and sometimes I lose track of time."

Mark nodded and then said, "Good thing we didn't have a hose this time."

"It's just a car," the judge muttered, but he mostly sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

"And that'll teach you not to take those curves so fast," McCormick admonished archly.

As undoubtedly calculated, that pulled the older man out of his slump. He jerked his chin slightly and said, "_That's_ rich, coming from you."

It might have gone further than that, but both men felt a sudden stiffening of the breeze, maybe a point or two shift in direction as well, now bearing straight down the slope to their left. The haze was thickening, now pushing down along the ground, chased to and fro by the wind.

"It's coming," the judge said grimly. "Out in the open over there, away from the trees, it'll move through quicker. A ditch, some rocks, they can make a big difference."

Mark nodded, not wasting his breath on agreement, only, "You say when. I think we've still got a little time."

The judge wasn't wasting his breath anymore, either. They were both approaching a jog, made harder by the thickening air. The haze could only be called smoke, now.

When it finally pushed up over the crest of the nearest hill, it was a sinuous thing—bright crenellations against the smoky sky. The road was still only paralleling the fire line. Hardcastle felt his pace slacken slightly and an attempt at a deeper breath produced a hacking cough. Mark reached out and steadied him in a stumble, then they were both standing still, trying to catch their breaths.

Mark recovered his voice first. "Now, I think," he said.

He pointed down to the right, where the road had divided the rocky, chaparral slope from the scattered trees above. It wouldn't be easy going, with some loose shale underfoot. At least the flames above gave slightly more visibility and the rising wind was sweeping some of the smoke away. Hardcastle nodded and they both started down with more haste than care, slipping in places and only halted by a handhold on the next woody piece of brush.

At least now their progress was perpendicular to the flames and quickened by every downward slide. They were so preoccupied—eyes down, trying not to tumble—that neither man heard the engines until they stopped, in the cooler shadow of a rocky projection. It was heavy machinery groaning on an upward grade. No sirens, not out here, but they could see the first fire truck rounding the next curve in the road below them, its headlights picking out two long cones of haze in the air before it.

"Thank God," Mark said. Behind that was a tanker, followed closely by two utility vehicles. It was evident that they'd spotted the fire and were choosing this patch of chaparral to make their first stand. Men were climbing out of the vehicles, equipment was off-loaded.

00000

The judge led the way down—a slower, more careful pace, now. They were spotted and ushered over to the command center. There was the sound of chopper blades overhead.

"Water drop," somebody said.

Hardcastle said something about his car--not insistent, mostly wistful. Radio calls were made, directing the reinforcements.

Eventually a sheriff's deputy showed up to collect them in a Jeep. The accident report seemed anticlimactic. By then the wind had shifted, and the water drops had quelled what was left of the flames on the side of the ridge that was visible from where they sat. Mark couldn't help himself, turning and watching through the back window as the last of it disappeared out of sight past another curve in the road.

"You're damn lucky," the deputy said.

00000

"And we were," Mark said, dishing another dollop of unlumpy potatoes onto his plate as he wound the story down. "Damn lucky."

"Too bad about the car, though," Mattie said sympathetically.

Hardcastle, in mid-mouthful of turkey, didn't have time to reply before Mark jumped in again. "Just singed . . . and the collision damage, of course."

The judge swallowed hard and muttered, "And the hundred gallons of water that got dropped on it."

"Yeah," Mark shrugged, "there was that. Those helicopter guys can't resist a target. They hit it dead on. At least it's _clean._" He smiled. "A paint job, the front end repairs, and a little detailing—okay, well, a _lot_ of detailing; there was a snail in the glove compartment. They said it'll be ready in a couple days."

"And you both got out by the skin of your teeth," Claudia added.

"But we didn't get home until late Monday afternoon," Mark said. "That was a problem. The turkey, see? It was still frozen." He pointed to the remains of the carcass. "I'm glad I called you again—the water thing really speeded it up."

"But it's hard to find something big enough to put a bird that size in." Claudia leaned one elbow on the table. "Whadja finally use?"

Mark grinned and hooked a thumb in Hardcastle's direction. "His idea. Worked great, even better than running cold water in the sink like you suggested, Claudia.

"Besides, even that wouldn't have been big enough . . . and nobody here uses the hot tub for anything else, anyway."


End file.
